I watched the Greek comedy play Lysistrata this evening. Well since it was a local adaptation it was called Lysistrata Lah! It was performed at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute by a group of young dramatists, most of whom I haven’t heard of before, but it didn’t really matter in the end because we all had a bawdy good laugh.
The story, consistent with the original, goes like this: The women of Athens and Sparta, tired of their men waging war against each other, decide to take the matter into their own hands (no no no not that way) and swear never to have sex with them until both sides agree to stop the fighting and live in love, peace and hormon – I meant – harmony for ever more.
The play will have its last staging this Wednesday, 26 March 2003 so if you haven’t felt offended by my style of writing thus far, I think you can probably survive it. It starts at 8.30pm but seats are pretty limited, so come early unless you happen to like sitting on the floor, looking up at male actors pretending to quell their massive uprisings.
The charity initiative is organised by Mercy Relief, which has already raised money and provided aid to Afghanistan, Indonesia, Cambodia, Bangladesh and the Palestinian refugees. All donations for this play will go to the ‘Iraq in Crisis’ fund.
All the world needs some Hellenic humour.
More about the Lysistrata Project and the original play. For some illustrations and excerpts from the original play, you can try here (mature content). Get your tees here.
[ Update: Andrea has a review on her site. ]
Comments
Hey, where were you sitting?!
I was in the front row, kind of in the middle. Next to the lady in the pink jacket (Mum).
Hey! I was sitting in the front row too! But on the extreme left, facing the stage. On my left was the bench. On my right was a lady in black (Mum).
Hrm. Well, I’m going to be at St George’s this Saturday for a wedding. On the off-chance you might know the couple getting hitched…
Heh… As you probably know, Kristen and I were singing at our friends’ wedding at St George’s two Saturdays ago, but I’m not attending this forthcoming wedding.
Did you do the drawing too?
Nope the illustration was taken from a web page with Press materials. However I did use Photoshop to desaturate then add a tinge of yellow+red to the image, before smoothening the jagged borders.
And I added the ‘No sex please… We’re Greek!’ text.